About this item

Once upon a time, if you wanted to know if a movie was worth seeing, you didn't check out Rotten Tomatoes or IMDB.. You asked whether Siskel & Ebert had given it "two thumbs up.". On a cold Saturday afternoon in 1975, two men (who had known each other for eight years before they'd ever exchanged a word) met for lunch in a Chicago pub. Gene Siskel was the film critic for the Chicago Tribune. Roger Ebert had recently won the Pulitzer Prize - the first ever awarded to a film critic - for his work at the Chicago Sun-Times. To say they despised each other was an understatement.. When they reluctantly agreed to collaborate on a new movie review show with PBS, there was at least as much sparring off-camera as on. No decision - from which films to cover to who would read the lead review to how to pronounce foreign titles - was made without conflict, but their often-antagonistic partnership (which later transformed into genuine friendship) made for great television.